LadyCrimson

Considering how much we pay the Feds every year, I'm not exactly jumping in anticipation over their piddly "rebate." But I suppose, assuming we get one, it'll go into our savings account, which we're trying to rebuild up again after buying this house. Altho, remodeling the kitchen sounds like a fine idea, too ... but nah, not this year.

True enough that we still generally have pretty cheap gas compared to other countries. But I think in any country, if anything has a fairly noticeable impact on your budget, where you can't easily adjust to accommodate it, you have a "right" to complain. This kind of rapid rise in price at the pump hurts a lot of people - even in the US. Especially in areas - in any country - where housing/rent/insurances etc. vs. income have so many people on very tight budgets already. That said, anyone obsessed with gas-hungry vanity vehicles when they don't actually need such a vehicle (SUV's etc....)... and could afford to get a more efficient vehicle (I know many can't right away...), I don't have much sympathy. I hate hubby's van, but he needs it for work (he moves huge loads of servers and other bulky equipment fairly often). We moved just in time - hopefully even w/the gas prices, with his reduced driving mileage, it'll be better than before, budget wise. Me, I hardly drive at all. I'd like a more efficient car (my '98 Legacy wagon only gets about 22mpg), but on average I only fill up my tank once a month or so - sometimes less. So I figure it can wait till our budget isn't so tight. Just for fun, here's a picture of a gas station from Feb. 2, 2008. The same exact station, last time I filled up a couple weeks ago, was $4.11 for the middle unleaded fuel. 70 cents in 2.5 months. It's probably gone up a little more now, even since that last time. Heh.

Oh, no, I didn't mean there was anything wrong with what's in your post. Only that my own personal words would be too strong. Most of it would never get past the filters.

If I turned all that pink blue, I'd like it a lot. Love the simple design ... just color preference.

Hehe...my experience is the complete opposite, w/'everyone' hating .wmv and not using it. But fine, fine, I added .wmv to the list.

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Heh, yeah, when I was 15/16 I spent more time at my boyfriend's apt. & his mom than my parents house.

What you're calling a griddle/sandwich press thing - is that anything like those 'lean mean grilling machines' (or their knockoffs)? If yes, yeah, they're pretty cool for electric cooking devices. You can toss meats/burgers or vegies or whatever in them, close the lid, and in 8-10 minutes they're done. If not, then, well, try one out. An electric wok or fry-pan of some kind would be a must for me, if I had no actual stove top range. Only problem is finding a good one - a lot of the cheaper ones break easily or start to lose their high-heat capabilities fast (their heating elements or plugs don't seem well protected), but this one on Amazon is rated pretty high by viewers. Never tired it personally tho. My mother loved those rectangular electric skillets. You could either use it to quick fry some eggs or cook pancakes on, or toss chicken, rice, vegies, liquid etc in it, cover it, and it'd be kinda like using an oven to make an all-in-one casserole/pan-dish. But again, you have to research them a bit, since many cheaper ones are just that ... cheap.

Get Smart, 2nd trailer: I don't know if it'll be a good movie or not, but the first 45 seconds of that trailer had me rolling.

1 - 4 2 - 9 3 - 11 4 - 16 5 - 17 6 - 18 7 - 25 8 - 28 9 - 29 10 - 30 11 - 34 12 - 37 13 - 43 14 - 38 15 - 14 16 - 15

It wasn't a disagreeable situation like that, but I had to do pretty much the same thing when I was in grade school when my dad got MS. Not fun for anyone...but it certainly doesn't sound fair to put you in that situation with someone you barely know. Glad you have a friends you can hide at out for relief.

Normally I'd agree 100% with that, but I had my hearing tested not long ago (along w/a lot of other stuff...). Which is how I know about my average hearing 'loss' in that small frequency range and the still above-average hearing ability in many higher and lower ranges. If you poked your eardrum, you'd know it. Maybe some people have ear canals that are more shallow than mine or something, increasing their risk w/Qtips. I think mine are pretty far back there.

It's fun, though it is harder than it looks. I always thought it looked pretty hard to begin with...but it'd be so cool to forge your own sword or something. :D My only real hobby is still photography ... doesn't even matter if I ever become 'great' at it - there's something just so addictive about looking at the world through a lens. I saw a documentary about a Nat. Geo. photographer - when he was shooting a rodeo event, he had some guy who followed him everywhere, holding on the to back of his shirt, to pull him out of danger in case he (the photographer) was getting too close to the kicking horses etc. Because when you're obsessed with looking through the camera, you tend to become oblivious to anything not in the frame of the photo. I love that sensation...although, since I have no one to hold the back of my shirt for me, I think I'll avoid rodeo photo-shoots....

I'm already there. Well, almost. Even us middle-aged fogies have to decompress and play.

Oh, look, it's a cat on my desktop! What a shocker!

Made some burgers, going to watch some CSI:NY on the braindrain device.

The whole Qtips are dangerous thing is over-rated. At least if you're an average adult with most of your fingers still attached and the brain to know not to push them too far in. I've swabbed the ear folds and poked them in my ears for 20+ years ... haven't harmed my eardrums or my hearing yet.

Wait, wait...wasn't that canceled? *Googles* *makes the "YES!" hand gesture* Awesome news, and hopefully it'll be at least as fun as the original, even if it is all 3D artsy and stuff.

Seems like we're still fairly balanced here age-wise. Altho I thought I remembered a few 45+ last times around that haven't voted this time.

Hook a PC into the TV. Then you have the best of both worlds.

I've disliked Windows Movie Maker and the .wmv extension for a decade - it's always seemed buggy to me - and have spent most of my time finding ways to avoid it. I guess I forget not everyone hates it that much, heh. I figured people would most likely upload game clips, if they uploaded any video at all, and that would likely mean they'd be using Fraps (avi) and something like Virtual Dub (avi - and free) or some $20-$30 commercial program to edit/convert. Maybe that's the presumptuous geek in me tho ... does anyone here still use .wmv with fair frequency?

It doesn't sound ethical to me, either, to use a device like that for public areas. Especially since I'd probably personally notice it ... maybe not as loudly as a teen might, but it'd still bug me. It is odd tho how I have that 'dead zone' that is, perhaps, normally fading out with age, but stuff much higher than that zone I can still hear perfectly. My dad had a favorite story about a friend of his who thought his new speakers sounded muffled, but much later learned that he had a lot of wax deep in his ear. Doctor cleaned it out and everything was fine. So I wonder how many older people would hear a little better if they had their ear canals thoroughly washed out...since that's not something people do very often, if ever. Q-tips now and then, but not actually flushed out.

Hmm, interesting topic. *ponders a while* I used to think similarly - that games have been lacking the last several years. I could point fingers at a lot of things, but they never feel satisfactory as an explanation for my increasing disinterest in the newer games. So I'll vote nostalgia as well...the emotional memory of certain games being so fantastic (to you) for whatever the reasons, with nothing ever quite duplicating that emotional sensation since. It's a lot easier - well, for me at least - to go back and play a game I know inside-out and still find moderately enjoyable than to spend hours to learn the mechanics of a new game that is essentially the same format as the older game. I've become jaded/too familiar with the way games 'work', so it's never going to feel 'new' and 'exciting' even with a new story or renamed skills or 1000 funny little side quests or items. The one thing I've noticed about more recent games is that most of them lack what I call the addictive factor - that thing that makes you want to replay them over and over. Now, even if the game is an utter blast the first time through, I feel like I've seen everything in the game already, even if I know I haven't, so the replay desire isn't there. Yet, I can/want to go back to older games, even tho I know every nook and cranny of those. Maybe for me, the more vicariously visual the environment becomes and the more important those visual cues are to the "emotion" of the game, the more it starts to fall victim to the 'wow that was a great movie, but it sure wouldn't be the same a 2nd time" syndrome. And I guess I still equate "great game" by the replay factor. I've never been into "the story", so I know that's not my issue. Beyond the obvious nostalgia and burn-out, I still can't put my finger on it. :/

Yes, I did it once. I had to use an override file in an override folder to make it work - there was a poster named stoffe-something that gave me the file when I asked about the same thing, here, many moons ago. That thread is lost to time, but....yeah. It was funny. I still have the file, if you want it. I think all you had to do was put in the folder and the option would show up under the right circumstances - which I think was when you first originally get him/can do all those convos that give you influence - but I don't remember 100% for sure. Edit: The file isn't a 'mod' in the sense of say, giving your chr. powers to choke anyone anytime. It's just a file that sorta restores the convo option (or part of it) that was taken out, or something.